Knowing when you've been beaten

Last night we managed to whip Hodir in 10man in under 3 minutes, earning us the rare cache - and another server first on 10 man. I'd gone ret for this fight, since it worked for us on Ignis, getting us the Stokin the Furnace achievement. I am humbled to say however - I didn't bring the pain.

After several attempts, some of which I was pushing 4600 DPS, we just weren't getting it done. We were riding the line so fine, that one slip and we were off the edge. We made a quick swap out - I went back to Holy and our Disc priest swapped out for his Elemental Shaman. I was humbled.

I know I'm not the best Ret pally out there, and maybe I was doing my job as well as I could, but this was embarrassing. My only saving grace was that I was able to keep up my end of the healing. Keeping all the cleanses up was also interesting, and I was definately having to scoot and heal. Holy Light - move. Holy Light - move. Over and over. Fortunately I could always grab one or two shots on Hodir when he cast his big ice storm and stops hitting the tank. I remember being shocked when I went to judge him and seeing my Hammer icon light up...I have to admit - I snuck one in there.

In general - I really like the hard mode encounters. I like that there are challenges that you can elect to shoot for, yet still clear the content if you don't want to deal with them (or can't). For example we did Mimiron on regular (we pushed the button once to try it) - but decided we want to spend our time on Freya++ this week. The nice thing is, if we hit a wall, we can do Freya+, then knock out Vezack and on to Yogg. We know we can beat Thorim and Hodir on hard modes now (though it'd be nice to not have to switch the shaman in), and I'm looking forward to a repeat on Yogg.

Next week - a tribute to Richard Dean Anderson - but I've got a rant to do first.